Attila tips and un-/under-documented features

[Slaists]

It seems, we do not have a topic like this for Attila. So, I decided to start one. Here are a couple starters:

Agents

It seems, it is very easy to train agents to be effective killers of generals in Attila (even more so than in R2). So, the tip is: look for the weakest stat a general has (authority, cunning, zeal) and use the appropriate agent to kill the general. The replacement captain will have all attributes at 1 allowing for very high success rate for any type of further sabotage using your other agents.

On a related topic: beware of low global food surplus (in the range of 10-20). The AI agents know how to look for this and will induce famine in your provinces leading to army starvation. A surplus in a couple hundred area is much safer. Hordes settling are especially vulnerable as they tend to have almost no food at the start of the settlement process.

Immigration

High military activity in an area causes a lot of immigration potentially leading to nasty (-20 and more) PO hits. One way to drastically reduce immigration is to raise taxes to very high for a few turns. Immigrants get scared away.

Assault-Withdraw Cycle

In Attila, we can assault a city, withdraw from the battle resulting in a "draw" battle resolution while maintaining siege. Use this to your advantage to gradually reduce the city's defenses as in: assault, destroy the walls and towers until your ammo runs out then withdraw. As you maintain the siege, the damage to the walls will stay through the turn. There is an exception to this: damage to the highest level Roman city walls seems to self-repair even if the siege is ongoing.

You can do this once per turn with a land army; there seems to be no limit as to how many times per turn you can do it with a navy.

Oh, and while withdrawing your land armies, make sure your onager withdraws first (completely off the field) or at least, does not withdraw last. If the onager is the last unit off the field, the garrison will capture it.

Defending coastal settlements against naval (transport) assaults

Use your garrison ships to take out the assaulting general while he is at the sea. A marine ship can take out most generals quickly while they are sea-sick. Once the assault army lands, they will be already wavering from the loss of their general.

Other things come to mind?